s, in my experience, to tell quite perceptibly in favour of those who make up their minds and hold to that decision firmly, rather than towards such men as seek counsel of the multitude and trim their sail to the tame breeze of precedent.

"Always go straight for a jump," my father had shouted to me once, years ago, while I sat up in a Norfolk ditch and watched my horse disappear through a gap in the next hedge.

I awoke on the morning after the centenary fêtes without any doubt in my mind--being still determined to seek a situation for which I was unfitted.

Having quarrelled with my father, who obstinately refused to pay a few debts such as no young man living in London could, with self-respect, avoid, I was still in the enjoyment of a small annual income left to me by a mother whom I had never seen--upon whose grave in the old, disused churchyard at Hopton I had indeed been taught to lay a few flowers before I fully realised the meaning of such tribute. That my irate old sire had th

Reader Reviews

It's a good book not a great one. A wealthy, drifting English heir in his thirties goes to France to escape his creditors. He falls in love at first sight with a young French girl and takes up a post as her father's secretary to be near her.
The rest of the book is like a detective story as fortunes change, politics, mystery and death surround the girl's father and the hero hunts down the man behind the crime, with his new French best friend.
The plot twists and turns in a confusing manner, making one feel the book may have been written as a serial.